


If Music be the Food of Love

by Catharmel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: BBC Sherlock - Freeform, Established Relationship, Friendship/Love, Getting Together, M/M, POV John Watson, Romance, Sherlock's Violin, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-02
Updated: 2013-05-06
Packaged: 2017-12-10 04:57:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/782048
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Catharmel/pseuds/Catharmel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's a rainy night in London, and John can't stand the sound of it anymore. Sherlock offers to play for him, and John thinks of something else he wants Sherlock to offer him. It isn't about them getting together - they always were. If their relationship is a symphony, this is just the next movement. And it plays on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Adagio

**If Music be the Food of Love**

**Summary** : It's a rainy night in London, and John can't stand the sound of it anymore. Sherlock offers to play for him, and John thinks of something else he wants Sherlock to offer him. It isn't about them getting together - they always were. If their relationship is a symphony, this is just the next movement. And it plays on.

 

Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

 

_(Chapter 1/2)_

* * *

 

It was another rainy day on Baker Street.

The rain fell onto the sidewalk outside, loudly enough that John was too distracted to read. It wasn't even really one  _noise_ , that would be more easily ignored… No, the rain had to pour like a bloody drummer, slamming down on concrete with millions of little water droplets slapping onto the ground.

All right, perhaps that was a strange comparison, and one that didn't make that much sense, but cut him some slack! John had been sitting at his laptop for the better part of an hour now, he noted as he checked, and he had nothing to show for it. The rain had been too distracting, and writing was hopeless.

With a loud exhale, John shut the laptop, and the loud  _click_  of it was almost enough to overpower the rain for a second. Almost.

"The rain bothering you?" Sherlock's voice didn't even try to, though, not in terms of volume. But Sherlock had always known how to play his voice, whether he was acting like a normal bloke for a case, or threatening someone who had information they needed. This time, Sherlock's voice was lower than usual, and the timbre of it made John shudder. Not in an unpleasant way, either.

"It's worse than your violin," John remarked wryly, instead. Sherlock snorted. They both knew John didn't have a problem with his playing, it had been one of the first few things he'd learned about the detective. It was just one of a few inside jokes they had, things that were stupid and inane, but familiar and pleasant because of that. It was like wearing a very comfortable old sweater, John mused.

"Would you prefer I play?" Sherlock asked abruptly, getting up from where he'd been lying down on the sofa. They were in a lull between cases, and so all the mad genius had to ponder were the philosophies of life, and he'd long since concluded that the egg had come first. Obviously, whatever had evolved into a chicken had not begun as a chicken, and the first 'chicken' as people knew it was the first of its specie. Boring.

John's lips tightened in thought, and there was a pause before he agreed. Sherlock, of course, already had his violin out; he hadn't stopped moving to wait for an answer. _The git even had the gall to smirk at him_ , John thought amusedly,  _bloody know-it-all_. The funny thing was that with most things, Sherlock really did know it all.

Not just about the academic things, either, like where a particular sort of soil could be found, or what a certain bird's migration patterns were. Those were a given. Most would say that Sherlock's plethora of that sort of trivia was balanced by an unhealthy ignorance of who was currently in government, or how to play certain sports. And to be truthful, when John had met the man, he  _had_  been severely lacking in that sort of knowledge.

Not to say that he wasn't now, of course. On the odd day Sherlock would let himself be dragged along to the pub for Quiz Night, he would lose quite spectacularly. Current affairs? Celebrity gossip? Who's who? No, thank you.

But Sherlock had learned a few things since John had moved in with him. He could remember nearly four seasons' worth of  _Doctor Who_  information, for example, after watching the episodes with John in a telly marathon. He knew how John liked his tea, two sugars and a large splash of milk. He knew where to get the best cable-knit sweaters in London, after John had brought him along shopping.

And didn't that say something about them? John wondered idly, tapping his fingers on the desk to the beat. Sherlock was playing Paganini's Caprice 24, and his arms – usually all over the place, gesticulating to emphasize a point – were all controlled, now, perfectly and fluidly executing the mind's orders. And Sherlock had a brilliant mind. The music danced across John's senses, and a lesser man would have closed his eyes, to get a better feel for the symphony.

But John's darkened blue eyes were very much open. Sherlock, normally, was  _gorgeous_  – a sharp contrast of pale skin and dark hair, cheekbones so sharp you could cut yourself on, and a body of angles you wanted to… measure.

Sherlock like this, though? John was ninety-eight percent sure that Sherlock was showing off. He'd picked one of the most difficult pieces he knew, the kind that made his movements rigidly controlled, and just so happened to accentuate his angles. Sherlock closed his eyes when he played like this, and while this would normally be a  _not as good_ , as it hid away his eyes, Sherlock's lashes would flutter when his playing sped up. Much of the difficulty in this piece was the quickness of the bow, in many parts of the symphony.

What this meant, to John, was that instead of being distracted from his thought process by the rain, as he had been earlier, he was now distracted by how good Sherlock looked.

John was now long-since acclimated to the fact that he found his flatmate and partner-in-solving-crime rather attractive. It had taken a while, and numerous protestations at people that they were  _not_  a couple, thanks very much, but over time he'd simply come to terms with it. They might not be a pair in the conventional 'meet then date then marry then babies' sort of way, but John had finally admitted that the conventional relationship just wasn't something he was interested in anymore.

He had tried, of course; he'd gone out with Sarah for a while, and then there was that woman with the dog, and Jessica-or-Janica… But it was like trying to go from being a surgeon to a general practitioner, from a soldier to an  _invalid_. It wasn't PTSD, and he wasn't looking for a nice, safe existence of a life.

John wanted excitement, and adventure, and adrenaline! He wanted to be running through the streets, chasing down criminals, solving murders, and getting caught in shoot-outs! Well, all right, not so much that last one, but you got the idea. Sherlock had shown him a whole new side to London, to life… To himself, even, going back to the thought of being attracted to Sherlock.

With everything they did, John and Sherlock were practically a couple already. They lived together, they did the  _Work_  together (and Sherlock would never say, but John knew what it meant for the genius to share his life's Work with him), they went out for dinner together, they went shopping together… You could see the general picture. Add in the brush strokes of neither of them having anyone else that would even come  _close_ , and what you got was a portrait of the situation.

John wasn't entirely sure what Sherlock's romantic history was, if he even had any, but  _he_  was very much out of his depth. He firmly maintained that he didn't like men, and he never had, not even when he'd been in the army, and far away from anyone of the fairer sex. Far away from sex, in essence. A few of the other guys he'd known had turned to each other, and while those never turned into anything lasting, many of those men had walked away from it conscious of being less than picky, in terms of sex, when the situation required it.

John was picky. He didn't like to drink tea without milk, he didn't eat anything with cilantro in it, and he only dated women of a certain type. He'd lived the entirety of his romantic life only being with pretty, above-average women who enjoyed watching crap telly and romantic comedies. He'd been looking for someone to come home to, he reasoned, someone who would wait for him while he was on duty, someone to be a mother to the children he supposed he'd have one day.

And then he'd gotten wounded in Afghanistan, and he revised that to 'someone to come home to after working at the clinic'.

And then he'd found Sherlock, and the picture of the stereotypical girl he'd been looking for went up in smoke. Somewhere between all the cases, Sherlock chasing his girlfriends away, and John getting more and more comfortable in 221B Baker Street… Somewhere along there, they'd become what they were now.

Two halves of a whole. Even Donovan at Scotland Yard was accustomed to seeing the two together, now, and didn't insult Sherlock nearly as often. With John around, anyone who did tended to get on the receiving end of the ex-military man's glares, and he hadn't been an officer in the army for nothing.

Sherlock drew his bow across the strings for one last note, stretching it out, and the note hung in the air in front of them, like so many other things did. Sherlock's eyes opened then, slow and sensual – and John was now a hundred percent sure he was doing this on purpose. And then Sherlock smiled, one side higher than the other, dimpled cheekbones and a dark glint in his eyes, and he  _raised an eyebrow at him_ _ **.**_

__


	2. Chapter 2

**If Music be the Food of Love**

**Summary** : It's a rainy night in London, and John can't stand the sound of it anymore. Sherlock offers to play for him, and John thinks of something else he wants Sherlock to offer him. It isn't about them getting together - they always were. If their relationship is a symphony, this is just the next movement. And it plays on.

__Baker Street. Come at once if convenient. SH_ _

__If inconvenient come anyway. SH_ _

__

_(Chapter 2/2)_

* * *

John pounced.

His arms threw themselves around Sherlock's waist, and they tumbled onto the carpet. They were suddenly closer than they'd ever deliberately been before, physically, and his chest was pushing against Sherlock's with every breath he took. Just the proximity of it all, the warmth rolling off of the man beneath him, made him tremble.

It was a facsimile of an embrace, them on the floor, John atop Sherlock, and Sherlock's hands on his chest. A musician's hands, methodic and exact and  _sure_ , curled into John's sweater and stretched the stitches out enough to fit his fingers in, pulling him closer.

John dragged one hand up into Sherlock's hair, splaying at the back of his head and twisting fingers around the curls. John had just gathered the presence of mind to realize how much he had always wanted to do that, when Sherlock moved his mouth to John's ear and licked a trail of fire along its outer shell. The hot breath in his ear made him shudder, and what Sherlock said next didn't help much either.

"I want to see  _every inch of you_ ," Sherlock whispered hoarsely, " _Please_."

And, fuck, if there wasn't anything sexier than Sherlock  _asking_  for something.

John pulled back long enough to pull off his now-ruined sweater, leaving him cold in the chill of the night. He felt Sherlock's hands impatiently trying to divest him of his trousers, finally kicking them off with his – oh,  _warm_  – feet. Sherlock's foot trailed along the back of his calf, and then up along his thigh, giving him goosebumps.

John opened his eyes to see Sherlock's impossibly blue eyes, dark now like a storm about to be unleashed, staring at him. Sherlock's lips were parted, and then John was on them. It was a simple press of mouths at first, an introduction to what was to happen later.

Then Sherlock's tongue was sliding in between his lips, and his own rose up to greet him. They didn't dance, they  _fought_  – Sherlock's tongue gliding around his mouth, touching teeth and gathering information, and John's tongue running diversionary tactics. And then Sherlock's leg, hooked around John's knee, had flipped them over, and Sherlock was on top of him.

John had to chuckle – breathless and full of want, but still a chuckle – at the detective struggling to shimmy out of his trousers. And then he groaned, because Sherlock's hips, writhing against him, were not something to laugh at. He tore open Sherlock's silk shirt, and a few buttons fell to the floor. Silk gave way to reveal pale, white skin, and John had to touch to see if it was as smooth as it looked.

His thumb stroked Sherlock's collar bones, and the doctor part of him made a note of making Sherlock eat more often. The man part of him was exploring the rest of Sherlock's skin, licking down his neck and sucking the pulse point there. He nibbled a bit of skin, and Sherlock bucked his hips upwards with a gasp.

John pinched one of Sherlock's nipples in rebuke, and then twisted it with this fingers when it peaked. Sherlock let out a low groan, and snaked a hand down in between them, and then he was stroking John  _just right_ , and it was all John could do not to come before anything had even happened.

"I'm going to  _fuck_  you, Sherlock," John gritted his teeth even as he thrust lightly into Sherlock's hand. The other man only smirked, and it was so irritatingly  _sexy_  John lightly bit into Sherlock's cheek. Sherlock squeezed his hand tighter around John in response, scraping the side of John's cock with a fingernail.

"Then get on with it,  _Captain Watson_ ," Sherlock drawled, sounding annoyingly posh. John growled in annoyance, nipping Sherlock's neck just hard enough to break skin. "We'll need…  _Lubrication_ ," he panted, stroking the sore spot with his tongue in apology.

"Couch," Sherlock shifted, and something  _hard_  and  _not his so must be Sherlock's_  rubbed against his inner thigh, and John felt his toes curl. "L-left seat, between the cushions!  _Hurry_!"

John turned his head enough so he wouldn't be groping around blindly, and found the bottle of lube. Unopening it quickly, he poured a generous amount onto his hand, slicking up his throbbing cock and then sliding a finger in between Sherlock's legs.

The first finger slipped in easily, and John caressed the muscles there. They tightened around him, and Sherlock let out something that sounded like a whimper. Still stroking, John let another finger slip in, and began scissoring motions. Sherlock wrapped his legs around John's back, and began running one foot along his arse.

"Enough," Sherlock said lowly, and John pulled his fingers out of him in acquiesence. Sherlock's own hand directed John's cock to his opening, and with one thrust, John was inside of him.

_Two halves of a whole_ , John mused.  _They had been apparent opposites at the beginning – one friendly, one friendless; one pretty much average, the other an utterly singular character. But their differences complemented each other, like two jagged crystals with matching edges that came together to make something perfect._

Sherlock flipped them over again, with a winded " _Too slow_!", and then John was looking up into Sherlock's eyes. Sherlock was panting now, hips moving to push his body off John and then back, impaling himself on John's cock. Those impossibly beautiful hands were on John's chest, pressing down firmly for leverage, nails digging in and leaving crescent marks. John groaned, and trailed one hand across Sherlock's arse to cup it, the other wrapping around Sherlock's cock.

"F-faster," John managed, pumping Sherlock's prick roughly.

_Forget about finding a rhythm; they were chasing something, not a criminal this time but something primordial and based on instinct. Perhaps not the way nature had intended it, but something amazing all the same._

Sherlock acceded, speeding up his thrusts, and John felt the tension knotting in his stomach, tighter and tighter and  _tighter_ , until –

And John came  _apart_ , lying underneath Sherlock on the carpet in the living room of 221B, Baker Street. His vision went black, and his grip on Sherlock tightened, and then he was shaking as he orgasmed. His cock emptied itself in Sherlock's arse, and then Sherlock was coming, spurting all over his hand and chest.

Sherlock slumped over, not even bothering to pull himself free of John's cock. John moved his arms so he was holding him comfortably around the middle, and then he wrapped a leg around Sherlock's.

They just stayed there for awhile, basking in the languid afterglow, when Sherlock started snickering. It wasn't loud, but John could feel the movement of Sherlock's chest against his own. He lifted his head from where it had been resting against Sherlock's neck.

"What is it?" John murmured.

Sherlock's eyes were bright with mirth, and he pressed a soft kiss to John's nose before smiling smugly at him.

" _Come_   _along, John_."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There will be a T-rated version of this chapter in the future, maybe as a stand-alone, or under a series. Leave a comment, let me know what you think? Sorry, sorry, I know that 'come along' thing was ridiculous but it just /fit/!

**Author's Note:**

> I know I should be working on Stern, but this just begged me to be written. I've decided to make more time for writing, so it's likely I'll have a lot more of these shots in the future. :) Reviews are rewarded with cookies of love.


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